Bringing the crack since December 2003

Brave and the Bold, where even the background artists are comic book geeks

and God bless them for that! Another couple of episodes of this most magnificent of shows has aired and has a couple of comic-book geek moments making this worthy of a legality post (Anyone notice how most of my legality posts feature "Brave and the Bold", because I just did!)

First up, "Emperor Joker"

The pre-credit sequence has been long promised! A case from the files of the Bat-Computer

I won't spoil the explanation as to why he's wearing the costumes, but it's not the same as the one in the original comic (Which I don't think has been posted here, may have to do something about that)

And yes, they do shake hands a few second later before the titles roll.

Then we get to the episode. There's even a sort of pre-story sequence, with Batman fighting that most terrible of bad guys... The.. ummm... Ten-Eyed Man!

And yes, that is what those pages looked lik in that issue... Seriously, the fourth wall isn't so much broken here as crushed underfoot and tap-danced over... I LOVE IT! :)

Bat-Mite shows Batman his shrine to the greatest hero-villain dynamic in history... The more eagle eyed among you will spot one of the most surprising references even THIS show has ever made....

The Joker's Utility Belt (Batman #73) (I now want this scene to made as a collectible )

The Laughing Fish (detective 475)

And.. "A Death in the Family"... Yup, they went there, Bat-Mite even explains the fan's involvement in the fate of Jason Todd (He doesn't say which way HE voted, but I think we can guess from the way he says it)

I never thought I'd see THAT in "The Brave and the Bold". Note that Batman doesn't react to this, he doesn't confirm it, but he doesn't deny it either.

But he has a spare display left, so Bat-Mite "arranges" for Joker and Batman to face off against each other. I love his gang this time, it's been noted that BTAS Joker had henchmen patterned after the Three Stooges.. on mega-steroids. IIRC Cesaer Romero's Joker had a gang patterned after famous silent film stars... Brave and the Bold combines the concepts (as it so often does)

Mr Hardy Mr Arbuckle

Mr Chaplin

Mr Keaton and Mr Lloyd (LOVE that Harold Lloyd gets some respect, a vastly under-rated comedian of the 1920's, more prolific than Chaplin and perhaps Keaton's only true rival in terms of exquisitely timed physical comedy)

And who's the girl? Well, she's not Mabel Normand, but she IS familiar to the Batverse... Yup, meet Brave and the Bold's Harley Quinn! I don't know if she's going to keep that look if she appears again, but I LOVE IT! A black and white Harley constrasts beautifully with the Joker's colourfulness, and the squeaky voice matches the look beautifully.

Shortly thereafter an attempted good deed by Bat-Mite goes awry and the Joker has cosmic powers... which he uses to upgrade his costime and indule his favourite passtime... devising deaths for Batman, but the difference is that here he can do it again, and again and again... (It's more than a little macabre to be honest, but in a Joker-ish way)

Oh, and he also conjures up a genuinely terrifying Joker-mite to keep Bat-Mite occupied. after dressing Mite as his court jester (another nice nod)

I won't dwell on the rest of the episode, enjoy it for yourselves when you get the chance, I WILL note that according to the end credits the Joker was supposed to have a song in this episode called "Where's the Fun in That?" Which from the point in the episode when he says the line would presumably have been about how much he enjoys devising and constructing complex, overblown deathtraps.

For legality a couple of covers that featured in the episode

And then there's the Doom Patrol episode, which I will say nothing about as it should be appreciated for what it is, a remarkable and powerful story about the choices that make one a hero, that is respectful to the source material in the way that Brave and the Bold always somehow manages.

I will showsyou a background from the episode though, just to show how complete the geekitudity of these people is...

Can you spot all the Doom Patrol references here? I won't mention the obvious ones, but it does include;

Shasta the Living Mountain from Morrisons deranged one shot parody of the Doom Patrol and Liefeld style storytelling; "Doom Force"Romulus and Remus (Siamese twins, conceptual aerialists who perform their death defying acts whilst seated on the ground) and Baboushka the living Russian Doll are acts in the circus of the Geomancers in Morrisons Doom Patrol 37.

There is no part of that sentence which is not glowing with radioactive crack! :)

As someone pointed out, he can see all around him, unless he want's to do something like... make a fist, or wash his hands, or the like! :)

Though one of his appearances does have a line something like; "Escaping from a high security prison is child's play for a man with his powers" which had even 14 year old me going "Eh?" when I read it the first time.

The way I always figured it, the idea is that, since he has optic nerves on his fingers, he can get ultra-close up views of the inner mechanisms of locks, which makes picking them a breeze. Give him a toothpick and uncovered hands, and the guy could probably open any locked door around. (Of course, that leaves all the OTHER problems inherent in breaking out of jail, like, say, guards, but presumably he'd get someone else to help out with that.)

Actually, I wouldn't be sure that was a disguise, she's a shapechanger after all (She can alter her body's size disproportionately, so it's possible that the fat form was hers and Elastigirl the assumed form. :)

Heh, I once had an rpg character like that; Rokorokubi, she was the legacy of a Golden age Japanese "Villain" (actually forced against her will to fight for the Axis) with elastic powers, she started as a teen hero, then took time off for College and got really fat when she started entering eating contests (since she's elastic her stomach has an infinite capacity, plus no health risks for being fat with a rubbery body). However, since she is elastic she can compress her body to be super thin and hot at will. Its really the ultimate secret identity.

One thing with the Marxes if that if one of the boys is anything like Groucho he falls into the dangerous trap of possibly out-joking the Joker (which usually gets you let go from the job very painfully).

I think Groucho would be fine as another goon in costume, following the rules: (1) Laugh at the right time, (2) stop laughing at the right time, (3) do exactly what the J-Man says, and (4) keep the trap shut. Anyone hanging out with him must be getting the cash up front, and it helps to have nothing to lose.

Now I'm really disappointed. I guess Chaplin and three very obscure other people from the silent era are ok, but I'd love to see a mega-gang with all the greats: 3 Marxes, 3 (Can I have 4? I love Shemp too!) Stooges, Abbott & Costello, and Laurel & Hardy. Even if they're just there to look tough and dogpile on the rabbit. :D

Err, as darklorelei has already pointed out, they aren't really all that obscure. Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle and Harold Lloyd were three of the GIANTS of silent comedy - they were big, big stars in their day, and they're still pretty well known today.

Don't mean to dogpile here retro old bean, but Arbuckle, Keaton and Lloyd are anything BUT obscure.

Keaton alone has a career of such extraordinary talent and creativity that even Orson Welles considered "The General" to be "the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made". His timing and direction are made even more awesome by the crudity of the equipment he had to work with, most of his physical comedy was genuinely dangerous, like the famous "collapsing housefront" scene which weighed more than two tons and would have crushed him if he'd been a few inches off.

Lloyd was, in his day, more prolific than Chaplin, perhaps more daring in terms of physical stunts (Which he also performed whilst missing a thumb and forefinger from his right hand), and a little less given to mawkish sentimentality (Which always puts me off Chaplin) though he refused to let his movies be televised whilst he was alive, which led to a lot of people not knowing about him until relatively recently.

And Arbuckle was also, literally and figuratively HUGE in the silents of the 1910's.

I'll defer to the group, especially since Harold Lloyd appears in more Google results than Groucho Marx. I still say that mistaking the oversized guy in the bowler hat for Ollie was completely understandable.

And Arbuckle's infamy is, by most accounts, pretty much entirely undeserved and a sad early case of trial by media. He was acquitted of all charges and the woman involved was by no means well, plus her agent and companion seem to have been less than shining examples of humanity.

But then, there are still people who believe Mama Cass choked on a ham sandwich.

Recently though, my overall opinion of Scooby Doo has been coloured by the rather marvellous "Mystery Incorporated" cartoon, which is to Scooby Doo what Transformers Animated is to Gen1 Transformers, an enormously enjoyable show that revels in making good natured fun of itself and it's predecessor series.

Case in point, in the most recent episode, which is partly set at the "Crystal Cove Animal Asylum for the Criminally Insane" which includes an excellent Silence of the Lambs pastiche, but which manages to top that at the end with this cameo...

Of course, it was Boo-Boo who was REALLY the killer, but got away with it thanks to Ranger's Smith's worrying obsession with him "That Boo-Boo, what a doll", as he used to, rather creepily, say. Soon Yogi will break free and go on a nightmarish revenge trip.

I haven't seen Mystery Incorporated yet (though I've heard it has all sorts of shout outs, including one to 13 Ghosts-- I wonder who did Vincent van Ghoul's voice?).

There's going to be a crossover between Mystery Incorporated and Batman: Brave and the Bold in an upcoming BatB ep, if I understand correctly ("Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!", which is supposedly also going to reference a vintage MAD comics story and the 1960s Batman manga[!!]).

Oh, forgot to add about the Cass Elliot Scooby-Doo episode. It's called "The Haunted Candy Factory". It's been a LONG time since I've seen it (it may be on YouTube if it hasn't gotten yanked) but IIRC at one point there's a moment where Cass is trapped in a room that is filling up with candy (from a machine running amok) and EATS HER WAY OUT 'cause y'know, fat people can eat like nobody's business, right? Like I said, a cheap shot at best and if a person mistakenly believes the story about her choking to death...!

See, dislike the characters though I do, I could almost imagine that with Pyg, him going into one of his deranged rants and Batman just watching him with a single raised eyebrow, and then just punching the crap out of him. "You talk to much, you perverted plastic surgeon"

One of these days, I will catch up on this series. The more I read about it, the more I want to watch it, but, like the Mask said, "Can't make the scene if you ain't got the green." Oh well - someday. It's possible that BTBAB Harley's shtick is styling herself after whatever the Joker's current theme is. It's silent films here, so she dresses up like a flapper in black and white - next time, he might do, say, a fish-themed caper, a'la 'Laughing Fish', and she might be dressed as a mermaid, or he could do something in space and she's be dressed in a spacesuit, and so on.

The Doom Patrol episode was great and if you look at the Circus Posters on the far right, you can see the one of Beast Boy! Our favorite Green, Animal Shapeshifter! You get a clear view of it in the episode.

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